Sovereign Grace

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches his series in the

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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

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As David said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, despite the fact that maybe some of you haven't even seen me before, because I've been out for six weeks, and it's really good to be back after an extended sabbatical.

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I was out for two weeks of vacation, four weeks of sabbatical, and it was very renewing and refreshing. I know a lot of you have questions about how that went.

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It was a really good time for my family, a really good time for me personally, but most importantly, I would say that, just to kind of give you an update,

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God met me in that time away, and it was a very encouraging time in my relationship with God as well. I missed all of you very much, and one thing that God pressed on me and on my heart in the time that I was away is just the conviction that this is where I belong.

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I mean, I love Recast Church, and even the opportunity to go visit other churches, I missed you guys, and I miss this place.

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I miss the people, I miss the relationships, and it is a privilege, I think, and I see it this way,

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I see it as a privilege to walk this journey together with all of you. We have an opportunity to together sit under the word of God, and I don't mean that.

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I don't just say that tongue -in -cheek. When we first built this building, I resisted the idea of having an elevated platform.

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Now I'm standing up, elevated, primarily so that everybody can see and kind of interact and stuff like that, but part of the nature and my resistance to that, for 10 years,

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I preached on the floor for the reason that we all sit together under the word of God. It's not me over you telling you guys what to do, but it's been a privilege over these 10 years to all of us together come and sit under what

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God has to say to all of us, and part of my role as a pastor is to hear from God each week and let him tell me what to do, let him have his way with me, let him correct me and direct me and encourage me and challenge me, and then to share that with you.

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And so I hope that you experience that, and I hope that that's part of the reason that you came here this morning with ears to hear the word of God, not the wisdom of Don.

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That's very limited, and we would've run out of that by now. 10 years preaching, we would've ran out of that in the first two weeks, so that would've been over.

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But to hear the wisdom of God in his word, and I hope that's why you're here, and then also just that you love

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God and that you love each other, and I've seen that over the 10 years that we've been going as a church and I love that.

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So this morning we're gonna pick up where we left off in the book of Romans, and we're coming back into the text in one of the most controversial passages in all of scripture.

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I have made comments like that, like I'll tell you from time to time, this is a controversial passage, this is a controversial passage, and I'm not just saying that for hype, but the fact of the matter is this is a text that has divided

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Christendom, like there are branches of Christianity that see this text one way and branches that see it another way.

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There are churches that have split right down the middle over the subject of the sovereignty of God. How in charge is he?

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And this text is driving that point home. It is intentionally addressing the sovereignty of God.

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And I would say that it's controversial not because of misunderstanding. I think the text, if you read it,

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I think you're gonna come to a face -level understanding that pretty much everybody is going to. You're gonna come to a root -level understanding.

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It's not that it's too complex or too complicated to understand or too difficult, but I think that it makes us uncomfortable.

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I think the text probably makes everybody in the room to some degree uncomfortable. This passage, what

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I'm saying, will actually test our commitment of letting God, God's word define who he is versus just some fuzzy thoughts and notions about him.

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Will we believe what scripture says about our heavenly father this morning? Or will we skip over parts like this that we don't like so we can hold on to a more tame and pleasant view of the almighty?

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And I think that's a question that's posed for us as we enter into this text this morning. You see, because the fact of the matter is, according to this text,

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God is sovereign and we are not. God is holy and we are not.

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And before I read this text, we need to set out a couple of important guidelines to our understanding of the almighty before we come to worship, before we come to read the text.

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I just wanna make sure that we start the reading of this text. You have these thoughts in your mind before we ever even dive into reading it.

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And the first thing is that the only standard of judgment by which God can rightly be judged is himself.

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There is no outside standard that holds God's hand or holds him in constraint. He is not shackled to anything other than his own character.

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And despite the fact that this sounds like circular reasoning, that God can only be judged by himself, we must keep in mind that in the beginning,

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God created. If that be true, if in the beginning God created, he's the one who's responsible, then he is the only eternal, he is the holy, the almighty, the creator of all things.

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He is the standard. And what is written here in Romans 9 will point us toward the

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God who is who he is. Secondly, before we read, we must establish that God is free.

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Free beyond the idea or any notion that we have of freedom. Like a kind of freedom that is elevated and higher.

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How many of you would say you love freedom? You treasure and appreciate your freedom. But you know, even that's limited.

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Have you ever thought about how free you really are? How many of you chose where you would be born? Go ahead and raise your hand. How many chose your parents?

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Did you choose your height? Did you choose your hair color? Did you choose the color of your eyes?

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Did you, wait a minute, how free are you? Did you choose, at least tell me you chose what century you were gonna be born in.

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Did you choose that? Not free at all, thank you. Yes, absolutely, good answer,

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Calvin. Perfect. No, we didn't choose any of those things. So in what sense are we free?

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We're not free. God is free, we're not free. God is free like as in create from nothing the laws of physics free.

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Free to create time, free to create space, free to send his grace and mercy in whatever direction he chooses.

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His mercy belongs to him and not to us. We're gonna see that established well in this text. It is not ours to give out, it is his mercy to dispense.

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And so as we read this text, let's all consider how holy is our God and truly listen to the text to think about how free is our

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God and how merciful is your God. And let's allow the text of scripture to bend whatever twisted thoughts about God we may have back into alignment with who he says he is in the text.

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And so let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Romans chapter nine verses 14 through 29. Romans nine, 14 to 29.

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You can navigate in your device over there. I trust whenever I see you with your phone out that you're not playing

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Candy Crush or whatever. It's up to you, that's between you and God. But get that device out and navigate over to the Bible. Romans nine, 14, scripture journal.

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There's a Bible under the seat in front of you somewhere in that row if you don't have a Bible. But so that everybody can follow along and hear the very words of our holy

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God written for our benefit this morning. Romans nine, 14, what shall we say then?

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Is there injustice on God's part? By no means, for he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom

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I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.

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For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I have raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

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So then he has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens whomever he wills.

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You will say to me, why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?

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But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, why have you made me like this?

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Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

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What if God desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called, not from the

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Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. As indeed he says in Hosea, those who are not my people,

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I will call my people. And her who is not beloved, I will call beloved.

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And in the very place where it was said to them, you are not my people, there they shall be called sons of the living

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God. And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel. Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sands of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved.

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Though the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay. And as Isaiah predicted, if the

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Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.

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Let's pray. What a privilege,

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Father, that you would reveal yourself to us. That you would show us even just a glimpse of who you are and the way that you roll.

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I pray that you would help each one in this room to deal honestly with the default location, the default setting, the default trajectory of our hearts toward condemnation and destruction.

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But the reality is that is what we deserve in our rebellion against you. That's what our entire race deserves as we all in Adam have sinned.

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And so I pray that you would never allow the awe and wonder of your grace and mercy poured out on your church, poured out on your people.

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Never allow that to lose its power in our hearts and lives. But Father, for anybody who's been wavering, anybody whose spark has been drifting out, anybody who the winds of life have been just about to blow out the fire in their hearts of joy and delight over their salvation, allow this message this morning to fan the flames of that little ember and allow it to burst back anew in life because you are a

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God of mercy, a God of grace. I pray that you would receive our worship because you are worthy.

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You are high, you are exalted. You are the only one who is truly worthy of any honor, of any glory.

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And I pray that we would render it all to you this morning in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks to the band for leading us.

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I hope you were able to worship the Almighty God this morning together corporately as we had a chance to sing songs.

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If you can make sure you reopen your device or your Bible to Romans 9, 14 through 29 so you can follow along in that as we're gonna continue to head through this passage.

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And if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, juice or donuts, you can take advantage of that in the back. Restrooms are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left if you need that.

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But let's do the best that we can to try to keep the remainder of our time focused on God's word and what he has to say to us.

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And I think I need to kind of backtrack a little bit. In all honesty, knowing that I was going away for vacation and sabbatical, I tried my best to get the start of chapter nine today and it didn't work.

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So I can't always orchestrate that thing. And so we need to jump back into the beginning of chapter nine because that's the start of an outline point in the big picture of the book of Romans.

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Obviously we're starting in Romans 9, 14. But what came prior to this was kind of the introduction to the entire topic of the sovereignty of God.

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You see chapters nine through 11 are about the sovereignty of God working its way out in salvation history.

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How does the idea of our salvation and the sovereignty of God come together? And that's what Romans is heading toward in that big outline of sin.

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The book starts talking about our sin and our brokenness and our inability to save ourselves. And then it moves into from sin to salvation to sanctification to sovereignty, the part that we're in,

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Romans nine through 11. And then the remainder of the book is gonna be about service. And in Paul's letters and in his writings, he often begins the entire, almost all of his letters begin with theology, with what to believe, with what you ought to know, with what you need to know in order to be saved.

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And then only after he's established right belief, then he launches into how do you live?

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Now, how do you live in light of that? And that's gonna be that service component that's gonna come later. But I think it's important for all of us to remember the attitude with which

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Paul launches out into a discussion about the sovereignty of God and salvation at the start of Romans chapter nine.

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He began this chapter by telling us that he has deep anguish in his heart regarding the lost, particularly the

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Jews who were his people that have rejected their Messiah. And he says, I have anguish and turmoil in my heart.

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And he made a really strong statement. He said, he wished that he himself would be damned, would be condemned if it would mean that all of the

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Jews could be led in. That's the kind of heart that Paul had for the lost. He says, I wish that I myself could be accursed before God if that meant that everybody else could get in.

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And I think that's a pretty, how many of you think that's a strong statement? That's a pretty strong statement. That's one that I'm not sure I could make for anybody in this room.

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And at the same time, that's what he says. He says, I testify with all truth that this is the true way that I feel about this.

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But now he's gonna go on to talk about God's sovereignty and salvation. You see, Paul understood that salvation is not up to Paul.

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God's mercy is not something for Paul, that's something he possesses like candy to be thrown out at a parade.

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God's mercy, here is the fundamental truth from this text that's gonna carry all the way through this message this morning.

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God's mercy is God's to give. Bottom line, God's mercy is

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God's to give. It is his to give out freely. God is not bound by any external power that could force him to show mercy to those who have rebelled against him.

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Nobody's gonna get before God on that final day of judgment and say, but God, you owe me. You owe me,

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I attended church every Sunday of my life. You owe me, I gave. Did you see how much money I gave

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God? You owe me your grace, you owe me your compassion, you owe me your mercy.

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No one can say that before the almighty God. It's his to freely give.

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He is not constrained by our behavior one way or the other whether or not he chooses to show mercy or kindness or compassion to us.

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When he expresses mercy, when God gives his mercy and his compassion and his grace to a fallen human, he is always, always, always giving something to someone who doesn't deserve it every single time.

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Always giving it freely by his choice. Every single time

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I've talked about the way that salvation, particularly with somebody who disagrees with my perspective on this text, and I've talked about salvation and God's sovereignty, verse 14 will come up in the conversation in a side, not that they actually reference the verse, but the things that the verse says come up in that conversation.

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When I'm talking about and kind of trying to defend God's sovereignty over salvation and somebody else is bringing up the other side, verse 14, what shall we say then?

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Is there injustice on God's part? Is there injustice on God's part regarding salvation?

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How is it fair? How is it just? I remember sitting across the table once from a coworker, this was probably 15, 20 years ago.

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We didn't see eye to eye on this subject and I was describing the concept of God's sovereignty in a word picture, the word picture that I'm gonna carry through this message, all of humanity is by default because of our sinful nature.

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It's like we're bobbing in a river and that river is carrying us in the current, which is just kind of like the history, life, things, it's all carrying us toward one ultimate end and it's like a waterfall in the river.

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Every human being bobbing in this river and it is our destiny for condemnation, our default setting as sinful humans in rebellion against our creator.

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How many of you, go ahead and raise your hand if you just confessed today, I have committed a sin. All of us, all of us.

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Some of you didn't raise your hand just because you're like tired or whatever, but you know that you're a sinner. All of us have sinned and so we're all in this river together bobbing towards this waterfall of condemnation and eternal destruction.

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God's holiness requires that. But God in his divine mercy reaches down and scoops some out of the water and rescues them before they go over the falls.

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That is God's saving grace, that is his compassion, that is his will, that is his kindness. And at that point in the conversation, my coworker said

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I cannot and will not serve a God like that. If that is God, I cannot and will not serve him.

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A God who would only rescue some. And what I wanna drive home and what

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God through Paul is trying to drive home this morning through many ways in this text is this, it is

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God's prerogative to save. It's up to him.

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His mercy is his to give. And we ought to be in awe and wonder that he gives his grace and mercy to anyone.

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I mean like jaw on the floor never to recover from the stunning shock that he would show mercy to someone like, that's the kind of truth that you never recover from.

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You never get over that. You can't get past that truth if you really understand it. If you've really been embraced by the grace and mercy and compassion of God who owed you nothing, you're gonna be in awe your entire life.

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We don't deserve it. None deserves it. One commentary I read this week says, if we wish to take issue with him,

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I'm quoting, if we wish to take issue with him, that is God. We have fundamentally misunderstood our position in relationship to him.

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He is our maker and he can do with us as he wishes. Still quoting, this is an important message for our age.

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Modern man's greatest folly is to think he knows better than God himself, but we should know our place.

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This text is written to bring us back to our rightful place, a rightful place that is in awe of the

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God who need never show an ounce of mercy and instead has poured out his mercy extravagantly through punishing our sins on his only son.

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Is he just in choosing some and rejecting others? Well, I would just encourage you to think in terms of justice.

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Be careful what you wish for, folks. Be careful what you wish for. Do you want his justice?

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Do you really want his justice applied evenly? His justice applied evenly would result in the condemnation of all.

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Just leave us to ourselves. We're all in that river. We're all heading towards that one destination of condemnation.

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Without him acting, we die in our sins. That's it. Paul answers the charge of injustice against God in this choosing some and not choosing others.

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Remember that in the context, he actually, this is all coming on the heels of the passage that I preached seven weeks ago where he said,

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Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated, where he chose one brother over another brother before they were even born, before they had the opportunity to do good or bad, and that's why the charge of injustice might be here.

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And Paul answers the charge of injustice with an emphatic by no means, and he'd be justified in leaving it that. He could just say by no means, of course not.

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Of course God isn't unjust. How dare you accuse him and just walk on. But instead, in verses 15 through 18, he's gonna defend his answer.

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He defends his answer that God is not unjust. Paul reminds us all of, all using a quote from the

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Old Testament that God's mercy and compassion are completely within his freedom to apply.

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They belong to him. Just to give you an illustration, a crass illustration, would it be just for me to buy a round of beer for my friends at HopCat while excluding everybody else in the restaurant?

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Is that just or unjust? How do you categorize that? No one here would deny me the right to limit my graciousness in that context.

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Nobody here would say, if you're gonna choose to buy your friend a beer, then you have to buy a beer for the world.

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Would you say that to me? Of course you wouldn't. Some of you are going, pastor, don't buy beer, whatever.

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Or some of you wanna go with me now. Like, let's go to HopCat, right? You afford me the freedom to dispense with my kindness in a limited way.

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But when it comes to God, you may be tempted to think that God's mercy and grace should be open to all, that we all possess it.

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It's all of ours. No, it's still his. You see, you afford me the right that you don't want to give

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God, and he is so much more free than I am, to choose who he will bless and who he will not.

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Verse 16 reminds us just how much we as believers depend upon the mercy and compassion of God for our salvation.

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Our salvation and his kindness toward his church didn't depend on our will or our work, not on our exertion, not on our ability to put it all together, but it all depends on him.

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Our salvation depends on his will to give us mercy. If he was unwilling, we would have remained in the stream of rebellion against him with a terrible end as our earned and deserved default, plunging over that falls.

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In order to think rightly about this text, I would encourage you, by the way, to think about the church when Paul is thinking about the church, and to think of the lost only when he's speaking of the lost.

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What I mean is that many I've talked with are moved to think about what the lost do not have while God is attempting to tell you what you do have.

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Do you hear what I'm saying in that? This would be like an ungrateful child who receives a new set of wheels on his birthday.

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Hot wheels is about the best it's gonna get around my house, if they're lucky. But gets a new set of wheels on their birthday, and instead of expressing gratitude and wonder at the gift of a new car, oh my goodness,

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I can't believe that you would do this, mom and dad. New wheels, are you serious? The keys, the car, it runs, it works?

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Are you serious? A car for me? Instead of saying that. Can you imagine the ungrateful child?

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And instead of expressing gratitude and wonder at the gift, instead she lashes out at her father and mother, rejecting them for not buying everyone a car.

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How dare you not buy the world a car? I reject you. Did you hear that?

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Do you hear that attitude? And yet, can we be guilty of thinking about God in those terms? When what he's trying to say is, church,

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I have loved you. I have given my son for you. I love you so much, and I've given you so much mercy.

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And what about them? What about them, what about them, what about them? What he wants to tell you is how much you are loved.

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How much he has given to you. You see, this text is not primarily intended to orient our attitude towards the lost.

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That was earlier in chapter nine. It's given to us. How should you think about those out there?

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Great anguish and sorrow in your heart, and a drive because you understand where the river is heading, to go out and be passionate about reaching the lost.

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A passion that moves you to tears. Yes, you should have an orientation like that towards the lost, but this passage here in 14 through 29, this passage is supposed to give us our orientation toward God.

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Whoa, you saved me, you chose me, you rescued me. Are you serious?

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You gotta be kidding, but don't you know who I am? Yes, he knows you fully, and he chose you.

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Have you ever had that adrenaline rush that comes after just a near accident? Any of you ever had a near accident? Somebody pulls out in front of you, just in a split second, the deer is in your headlights.

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How did I miss it? I was in high school one time, and I had a deer literally jump over my

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Ford Pinto. It jumped over the hood. I'm on a country road out south of Grand Rapids, and it jumped over, and I'm like, bah, and ugh, and then my heart is like, do you know what

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I'm talking about? You have that split second, and it's like, whew, it was suddenly there, and then it's gone, and it's just you in the darkness of the road, or you and your family, and you're like, praise

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Jesus, what just happened? I don't know, he took the wheel, right? That racing heart kind of feeling?

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I almost died, but was somehow saved kind of feeling? Ought to cling to this text.

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I don't deserve it, but I was rescued. I don't deserve it, but I was saved. Oh my goodness,

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I was this close to plunging over the cliff of destruction and condemnation when he reached down and rescued me.

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I mean, what kind of gratitude, what kind of joy should this evoke in our hearts? The grateful thank you for sparing me should be heavy on this text.

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I couldn't save myself, but he for some reason, by his own will and counsel, chose to show compassion and mercy to us.

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What? Undeserving sinful me, undeserving sinful you.

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I was in the water helplessly bobbing toward the falls when he rescued me. God is indeed free to choose who he rescues.

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This is illustrated in verse 17 using the Old Testament character of Pharaoh. Some of you are familiar with the

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Old Testament stories and you went to a Sunday school where they talked about Pharaoh letting the people go and God raised up Moses and then

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Aaron, his mouthpiece, to go to Pharaoh and say, let my people go and Pharaoh's like, who do you think you are and who do you think this

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God is and he rejects him and there's an interplay, the words used are hardening Pharaoh's heart, an attitude, a spirit in which

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Pharaoh was like rejected the softness towards what God was telling him to do. And this text here is talking about Pharaoh and it says

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God raised up Pharaoh for the purpose of showing his, God's own power and to spread God's fame throughout the earth.

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He raised up this guy who rejected him. In the book of Genesis, there's that interplay between Pharaoh hardening his heart against God and God hardening

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Pharaoh's heart and I looked it up and it's almost even. It's like a dozen times that the word hardening is used for Pharaoh's heart and about 50 % of the time, it's

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God hardening Pharaoh's heart and about the other half, it's Pharaoh hardening his heart. So which is it, was

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Pharaoh hardhearted or did God make him, was Pharaoh in a position where he wanted to let the people go but God was going, nope, rain's on, you're not gonna be allowed to let them go.

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Did Pharaoh want that? He was like, man, if you could just let me let your people go, my people would be spared from all these plagues and man, it would be really nice but you're just forcing my hand here.

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Was that what was going on? But the text is, the text is kind of clear. God raised up a specific man who would oppose

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Moses so that God's power would be shown in the plagues that eventually released the people from Egypt.

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Let me quickly clarify that God showing mercy and hardening a heart are not exactly parallel.

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In order to show mercy, God must break into the natural order of things and transform a human heart.

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The default is hardness of heart. In order to harden a human heart, he only needs to let us have our own way.

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He only needs to let us bob in the river. He only needs to let us go. I truly believe that this is why the book of Exodus uses both

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Pharaoh hardening his own heart and God hardening Pharaoh's heart interchangeably so that we can see that what

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Pharaoh wanted and what God wanted were truly compatible with one another. Pharaoh didn't want to let the people go and God let him have it.

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What I mean by this is that the default of a human heart is indeed hardness, rejection, an animosity toward God.

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It wasn't like Pharaoh was, like I was saying earlier, I'd really like to let the people go but God won't let me.

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Just like I don't believe that anyone will ever be like, I wanted to trust in Jesus but God wouldn't let me.

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To quote from chapter three of Romans though, to clarify what the default is, the hardness of heart that's a default,

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Romans chapter three says, none is righteous, no not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God.

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All have turned aside together. This is talking about all of us. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.

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There is no fear of God before their eyes. To a person, we are born with a hard heart toward God.

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His hardening of heart only requires that he leave us to ourselves. He leaves us to our own wishes.

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He leaves us to our own desires. And without his pattern breaking grace and mercy, we don't just bob along.

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I've been kind of underselling that a little bit. We swim toward the waterfall of condemnation in our freedom.

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In our freedom, we swim toward his condemnation, speeding our way along in animosity and hatred toward him.

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God is free to dispense his grace in any way he sees fit. And this is fundamental to an appropriate amount of awe in your salvation.

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He chose us, not by our will, not by our exertion, not by our effort, but because of his mercy and his expression of his mercy on whomever he chooses to show mercy.

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He will have mercy on whom he has mercy. He will show compassion to whomever he shows compassion.

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But then verses 19 through 23 deal with the next logical question. If what we're painting, Don, if what you're painting here is a picture,

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Paul, if what you're painting here is such a picture of God's sovereignty, if he's really in charge of who's in the river and who gets out of the river, then the logical question is, if he's so sovereign, then why does he still judge us?

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We surely cannot resist his will. Isn't that unfair? What Paul is tackling here is a fall into fatalism.

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So if you go too far into the idea of the sovereignty of God then you're gonna get to the point where you think nothing really matters anyways.

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What we have to do is just kind of sit back and watch Netflix. If he wants us to move, he'll move us. If he wants us to share our faith, he'll make us share our faith, but otherwise we just kind of chill and do our own thing, right?

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Fatalism, what can I do to make a difference anyways? And he doesn't answer the way that we might like him to because the answer that we might all give, if you think in your mind about what the answer is, why isn't fatalism it?

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You might already have an answer in your mind, but it's not what Paul gives. He doesn't answer the way that I would have answered that question before really studying and reading this text.

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He doesn't pull back and say, just kidding. I overstated my case about how sovereign God is because man has free will.

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That's what I expect him to say. That's how I expect him to answer. But man has free will, so therefore he's responsible for his actions and you do these things and God judges you for it or if you do good then he gives you rewards and blessings for that and you're free.

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So that's where responsibility comes in, but that's not what he says. Instead, in the text

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Paul doubles down on the sovereignty of God. He doesn't withdraw his heavy hand from the pressure of God is sovereign and you're not.

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He doubles down on that. He puts us in our place as he has the right to do because our independent rebellious hearts are bent toward freedom from God.

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Every human ever born has been candidating for the office of God since day one.

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We think we know better than him. We want his job. But who are we, the text goes on to say.

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Who are we, Paul says. Who are we, the Holy Spirit inspires Paul to write. Who are you to answer back to the almighty

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God? We are the molded and he is the molder. Who are we to ask, why have you made me like this?

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That really is a cry of rebellion when you get down to the basic root of it, why have you made me like this?

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Anytime we conceive of a universe in any other terms then he is the potter and we are the clay.

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We are beginning to create a convenient fiction for ourselves. We are starting to divert away from the stream of what

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God's word has to say about our relationship with him. How often do we get this potter and clay thing backwards?

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And I would suggest to you most notably and most clearly when it comes to who's molding who, anyone who has ever carved, forged, or crafted an idol has turned the world on its head.

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Recast answer the question for yourself in your life. Who is molding who?

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Are you fashioning your God according to the things that you like, according to your preferences, according to your design, according to your desires?

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Are you crafting a convenient God for yourself? Or are you letting him mold you through his word to understand better who he is and where your position lies in light of him?

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And Paul says what is completely true in verse 21, uncomfortably true in 21, the divine and sovereign potter has the right to take one lump of clay, divide it in half, and make out of it one clay to hold precious perfumes and the other half to make a turlet.

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He has that right. Just like I was thinking about this this week and I was thinking, porcelain has a couple of different applications in our culture.

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One is, did you know that porcelain is used as a great insulator on the top of all of those power lines out there?

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So porcelain is used up there, it doesn't conduct electricity well, so it's used as insulators on all the high and lofty noble thing to bring electricity to your house.

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Anybody have any other ideas what porcelain is used for? Leave it at that, I didn't even need a picture.

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So who can truly question if God would choose to show his wrath and power by making vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

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Phrases we don't like. Phrases that make us uncomfortable. And I think reasonably so.

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Who can really ask that question? In verse 22, he starts off the phrase, what if God, and that's not a hypothetical.

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What if God desiring to show his wrath? It's kind of a little bit of a sarcastic grammatical structure in Greek.

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It's kind of like, so what's that to you? What are you gonna do about it if God would choose to create some vessels for the demonstration of his destruction and his power and his wrath?

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What is that? If God chooses to do that, what are you gonna do about it is the question.

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What if that's the reality? What if that's really who God is, then what? What if he chooses some and doesn't choose others?

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What are we gonna do about that? And that's where the, this is where the, I mean it's starting to get sweaty in here.

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Like this turns the heat up a little bit. Because we're not truly talking about clay. Clay is the metaphor.

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We're talking about living, breathing people. And nestled in the middle of verse 22 is a brief phrase that I cling to in this entire text to make sense of this.

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It cannot be missed in understanding how in the world the Almighty could justify creating humans who are destined for wrath.

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His patience makes sense of this. For what purpose does

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Paul add that God endures those prepared for destruction with much patience?

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Why does he add that phrase in there? He endures them with patience, giving them time to repent.

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All the while they remain in their sin. Earlier in Romans two, chapter two, verse four, you don't need to turn back there, but this is what he said about patience and what was expressed about God's patience and patience toward those who are not in.

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Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, why does he endure sinners with patience?

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That they might have an opportunity to repent. Every person who could rightly be called,

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I think that what you need to understand here is every person that in this text could rightly be called a vessel prepared for destruction, a phrase we don't like, because we're looking at it in that context from God's side and we're like, how could

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God do that? But on the flip side of that, over the years, they have gained these titles for themselves.

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Let me share a couple titles that I think just equally fit. From one perspective, we could call them vessels prepared for destruction, but they could equally be called an unrepentant usurper who would love to claw out

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God's eyes. Or a title like this, a time -tested rebel who refuses to give an ounce of the glory to Almighty God.

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Or a third title, a longstanding tenant who God patiently allows to trash his house, never paying a cent.

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Those titles work too, because his patience has been poured out on them.

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But verse 23 brings our focus back away from the lost to his grace toward us.

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The comfortable, uncomfortable reality that God endures with patience, those destined for destruction ought to land on us with increasing, life -changing, radical awe at his grace toward us.

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In the condemned, we see what we deserve. In the lost, we're reminded about what a rich and undeserved mercy he has lavished on us, not because we're better than them, because he has loved us.

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Without the reality of judgment, the richness of his glorious salvation goes down towards nothingness.

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But he has dispensed his grace toward us in a divine turn of events that he's orchestrated for his own glory.

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He's acted out his mercy through the cross of Jesus Christ. And we are the recipients of an extravagant gift.

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How many of you would raise your hand right now and just testify, I am a recipient of an extravagant gift? Crazy extravagant gift, praise

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God. But this text could lead some down the dark road of fatalism.

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As I mentioned earlier, what does it matter what I do? If God is sovereign and in charge, then what does it matter?

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How I live, my behavior, the things that I do tomorrow, the things that I do this afternoon. So how do we avoid fatalism?

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And I think it's a pretty simple answer. Believe and live the Bible. The answer to the problem of fatalism, to thinking, oh, what does it even matter?

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The Bible tells us. Believe the Bible. The Bible says things like God is in charge and he calls us to action.

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God knows our very thoughts and he calls us to pray. God has predestined those and chosen those before the foundation of the earth who he will express mercy to.

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And he calls us to evangelism. God hardens some hearts and he will judge.

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In verses 25 through 29, Paul extensively quotes the Old Testament. We're gonna brush through this section because there's really two primary things that he's trying to clarify in verses 25 through 29 as we end this text.

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They regard his divine choice in exercising his mercy and compassion. He has opened up his compassion to the

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Gentiles. That's what he wants to get from the Old Testament. He wants to clarify he's opened it up. How many of you are glad that he opened up his grace to the

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Gentiles? Some of you are like, wait, what's a Gentile? Us. Now how many of you are glad that he opened up his grace to the

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Gentiles? And then further, he goes on to quote and clarify from the Old Testament that even the Old Testament anticipated that very few of the

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Jews would receive their Messiah. Very few of the Jews would receive mercy and compassion. And this goes back to some of his earlier questions in chapter nine, the start of chapter nine, about how

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God can be both fair and not save the majority of the race of the Jews. And just to summarize for our purposes, what we need to understand from these four verses is that he's making a case,

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Paul's making a case, God's making a case through Paul that salvation does not come by race, but salvation comes by grace.

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It doesn't come through lineage of the Jews, but it comes through the one who was born of the

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Jews, through grace. And the text ends with a powerful quote that drives home the ultimate point of this text all along.

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If God had not acted, we would all be swept away in his judgment. Verse 29, quoting the prophet

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Isaiah, says if the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah.

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If the Lord had not chosen to show mercy to some of the people of Israel, they would have been done away with.

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And that is a great place to end this text. Because Isaiah's expressing what must also be clearly said in the church recast, were

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God to skip over us with mercy, were he to skip over us with his compassion, we would certainly have gone the way of judgment and condemnation.

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We would certainly be destroyed by his holiness. Were it not for Jesus, we would be like Sodom and Gomorrah, vessels destined for destructions, cities completely and utterly wiped out.

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So in applying this text, all of our thoughts about what we do with this text ought to revolve around gratitude, ought to revolve around thankfulness.

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He has chosen to demonstrate his mercy toward us. So I'm gonna give you six things.

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I'm gonna read them to you. This is gonna be like a skeleton. You can put the meat on these bones later. Conversations around your lunch table or with your community groups or however you wanna process this,

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I would encourage you to write them down, but we'll run through them real quick. The first application, we should start with wonder and awe that we are not swept away like Sodom and Gomorrah.

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We ought to stand in awe that his judgment and destruction has not come down upon us. Second, we should express gratitude for his choosing us.

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Third, we should be grateful for his awesome patience toward us. Fourth, we should be moved to acknowledge him as the potter and ourselves as the clay, letting him be the molder, letting him be the one who shapes us and not vice versa.

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Fifth, we should shun fatalism by believing the Bible and the call to action that we find there.

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The Bible both indicates that God is sovereign and the Bible also indicates that you have some stuff to do. Sixth, we should thank him for his undeserved mercy.

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At the end of the day, this is driving us towards a gratitude, a thankfulness, a life that is just always, always, always moved to awe.

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He rescued me at the last possible second and that thumping in your chest as the adrenaline of what was coming for you and missed you settles on your heart.

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Don't ever let that go. Never give that up. Let that be the drive of your life that I undeservingly was saved and rescued by the almighty

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God. He reached down and plucked me up when I could not save myself. And so this morning as we come to communion, we come to the tables to consider his actions of mercy toward us.

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He is a righteous God who must punish all sins. And so he made a way for sinful humans to come out from under that divine sentence of eternal punishment by laying our sins on Jesus Christ.

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So if your sins, if you're sitting here and you're thinking this through, if your sins have been punished by Jesus or punished on Jesus, and then you've asked him to save you and he is your king, then

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I encourage you to come to the table in the back during this next song, take a cup of juice to remember his blood shed for us and come and take a cracker to remember his body that was broken in our place.

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You can take that back there. You can take it back to your seat, pray, thank God, practice some of these applications of gratitude and gratefulness and then take that.

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But if you've not yet asked Jesus to cover your sins, then let me lovingly, firmly, truthfully warn you, your sins remain yours to deal with.

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If you haven't come to Christ and you haven't asked him to forgive you, you haven't asked him to save you, then the cross of Christ has no benefit to you.

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And I would ask you to skip communion this morning if Christ has not covered your sins, but I'd also like to plead with you today.

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Trust in Jesus, put your trust in him. Pray to him and ask him to cleanse you from your sins, ask him to lead you, and he will faithfully save you to a new life with a new hope and a new destiny.

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Anyone who places their trust in Jesus proves that God has chosen them as a vessel for mercy, that he has prepared you beforehand for glory.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace, your undeserved grace, there's nothing

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I could do to earn it. No, not by human will, not by exertion, not by my effort, not by my faith, not something that I mustered in myself to make you love me, to make you like me, to make you express your kindness to me, but Father, it is of you and all the glory goes to you and all the blessing and all the honor goes to you for the salvation of your people.

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Father, I pray that you would help us to walk out of here with more gratitude, more thankfulness in our hearts than when we walked in.

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And I pray that maybe you have opened some eyes here to the reality of their sin and the reality of how close they were to the fire.

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Maybe there are some here who are still right there, they're still in the river, they're still bobbing down towards that destructive end.

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Father, I pray that maybe today would be a day of rescue for them. And then for those who are all in with you,

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I pray that even now would be a meaningful time of reflecting on what it is that you did that saved us, the cross of Christ, his sacrifice, our sins being laid on him.

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And then he rose again three days later, victorious as our king. Father, I pray that you would help us to walk more closely with him this week, in Jesus' name.